Salvatori Center Associated Faculty

Dr. Mark Blitz, Director

Mark Blitz (A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University) is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy, Director of the Henry Salvatori Center, and Chairman of the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College. He served during the Reagan Administration as Associate Director of the United States Information Agency, where he was the United States Government's senior official responsible for educational and cultural exchange, and as Senior Professional Staff Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He has been Vice President and Director of Political and Social Studies at the Hudson Institute, and has taught political theory at Harvard University and at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-editor (with William Kristol) of Educating the Prince, and the author of Plato's Political Philosophy, of Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life, of Heidegger's "Being and Time" and the Possibility of Political Philosophy, and of many articles on political philosophy, public policy, and foreign affairs.

Dr. Joseph M. Bessette

Joseph M. Bessette has been at CMC since 1990. He teaches courses in American government, ethics, and crime and public policy. From 1985 to 1990 he served first as Deputy Director for Data Analysis and then as Acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice. Before that he served for three and a half years in the Cook County, Illinois, State's Attorney's Office, where he was Director of Planning, Training, and Management. In 1983 he was issues coordinator for the Chicago mayoral campaign of Richard M. Daley. From 1990 to 1993 he served on Mayor Richard Daley's Blue Ribbon Panel of Police Hiring and Promotion, which dealt with issues of affirmative action in the hiring and promotion of Chicago police officers.

Dr. Charles R. Kesler

Charles R. Kesler is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute. He received his A.B. in Social Studies (1978) as well as his A.M. and Ph.D. in Government (1985) from Harvard University.

Dr. Christopher Nadon

Christopher Nadon was educated at the University of Chicago (B.A. 1985, M.A. 1989, Ph. D. 1993) and previous to coming to Claremont McKenna College taught at the University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy and Trinity College in Hartford, CT. He is author of Xenophon's Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia and is interested in the relations between religion and politics.

Dr. James H. Nichols, Jr.

James H. Nichols, Jr., is Professor of Government and Dr. Jules L. Whitehill Professor of Humanism and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College and Avery Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. Educated at Yale and Cornell, he has also taught at McMaster University, the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and Yale University, and spent a year working at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, as Associate Director of the Division of General Programs. He teaches chiefly courses in political philosophy and also the Freshman Humanities Seminar. His publications include Epicurean Political Philosophy: The De rerum natura of Lucretius; translations with introduction, notes, and interpretative essays of Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus; and articles on pragmatism, human rights, Plato’s view of philosophic education, liberalism, and political economy. His most recent book is Alexandre Kojève: Wisdom at the End of History, and his current research focuses on the Roman imperial historian Tacitus.

Dr. Ralph A. Rossum

Ralph A. Rossum is the Director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government and the Henry Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism at Claremont McKenna College; he is also a member of the faculty of Claremont Graduate University. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is the author or co-author of nine books (including American Constitutional Law, a two-volume work now in the seventh edition and, most recently, Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: "Text and Tradition") and over 65 book chapters or articles in law reviews and professional journals.

Listed in Who's Who in America, Mr. Rossum has served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Loyola University of Chicago, as Vice President and Dean of the Faculty at Claremont McKenna College, as a member of the Board of Trustees of The Episcopal Theological Seminary of Claremont, and as President of Hampden-Sydney College. He is currently chairman of the Council of Scholars and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Academy of Liberal Education.

Mr. Rossum has an extensive record of public service. He was a member of the Police Reserve in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as Deputy Director for Data Analysis of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Institute of Corrections in the U.S. Department of Justice and as a member of the National Board of the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education.